


A (Dish) To Build A Dream On

by TheSupernaut (orphan_account)



Category: Mass Effect
Genre: Bad Flirting, British Slang, Dorks in Love, F/F, Gift Giving, I Will Go Down With This Ship, Pie, Post-Reaper War, Short & Sweet, Slice of Life, Tooth-Rotting Fluff
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-09
Updated: 2017-01-09
Packaged: 2018-09-16 00:02:47
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 897
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9264944
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/TheSupernaut
Summary: While recovering from the war, Sam gives Shepard a present."It may just give her something to believe in, now that her days of running wild and dispensing cosmic wrath have been ground down to dust."





	

Shepard collects tales, stories told in only two languages: divine feats of salvation or devilish stunts of grander.

To the average person, she was Commander, a woman molded and formed into a purity, an ideal made flesh and given life to that Sam thinks sometimes borders on divination. Golden and white.

 To her friends, she was Shepard. A moniker told across galaxies as a dealer of death and compassion. Priceless, shining many colors, a multifaceted soul made pure by early morning hugs and late night philosophizing. To then she was irreplaceable, the brightest of candles burning so the hopeful and hopeless can find their feet.

To Anderson, she was crazy. The progeny he never had, but fathered all the same. Proclaimed his praise for her the day she came out to him, and the day she became a Spectre, and that day she walked in his office, dead and arisen once again to save this universe from galactic malfeasance. 

To Sam, she was something simpler. Commander to Shepard to Jane. Chains of command and insecurities torn down and blown up over many months.

To Shepard, Sam was someone to keep her safe, to hold hostage from the world rather then beholden unto the world. Brown and blue, a gentle heart kept locked under crisp uniforms and hierarchical distance and demands of their duty. A heart shining at night, whether Jane was near tears or euphoria, it didn't matter, long as someone cared on such a deep level. Long as someone gave Shepard a prayer to exhale in sleep or in times of stress.

Sam doesn't mind being a lot of things for Shepard, blanket included. Especially now, when everything is encased in cold sterility and whiteness, encasing Shepard in a bubble.

It's depressing sometimes, seeing Shepard chained beneath bandages and morphine and half smiles as Sam holds her hand, keeps that dream of a dog and snarky children and a house alive through silent caressing of skin held in warm fingers grasp.

They're down to kings and a few pawns, so Sam decides to break the stalemate one day. Brings a metal dish with a gift wrapped in tinfoil one early morning, the just rising sun greeting her arrival by casting orange and yellow rays, warming cold bare skin and cold bare walls.

"Didn't know it was my birthday," Shepard says, lifting herself up beneath crumpled sheets and blankets to grasp the dish between pale fingers. Her eyes burn with prickling tears as she unwraps a gift worth it's weight in credits.

A single slice of Key Lime Pie.

A dish found only at high ranking Alliance officer parties or smuggled out of kitchens and workplaces like grade-a red sand. Bright green and with graham cracker crust and a smiley face dollop of whipped cream.

"You do not want to know what I had to go through to get that," Sam's only half joking, because this is London, and she'd have to sell her soul just for the recipe and a few limes.

She smiles, grins and bares future damnation as Shepard slowly chews at it. Her movements, much like the current state of time and space, are slow and careful, unwilling to risk eating it in one giant chunk.

That first bite is salvation from years of Alliance rations, a small taste of domestic normality. Shepard swallows, and Sam takes the chair next to her, grasping her hand, brown eyes casting warmth into shifting and exhausted green ones.

"Thank you Sam," she whispers, like she were offering reverence. Maybe she is, the way Shepard presses her palm into Sam's, fingers threaded together.

"Anything for the Savior of the Galaxy," Sam says, content to watch Shepard slowly turn the pie into a heap of crumbs and cheeks stained white from the cream.

"Small part of me wishes you had come in wearing skimpy lingerie," Shepard teases, resting a heavy head on the Specialist's shoulder, skin feeling as warm as Sam's cheeks. Shepard's good at creating messes, and this one is no different, leaving Sam to sputter and stare out the window, too embarrassed.

"If you're very good, maybe I can arrange for that to happen on your actual birthday," she finally says, smile forming as she hears Shepard grumble, wrapping an arm around her waist.

"You're saying saving all of galactic life from utter destruction isn't enough of a good deed?"

Sam turns her head, presses a kiss to Jane's cheek, the two of them watching the sun chase away old night with shades of purples and oranges that give way to cloudy blue sky. A start, a revealing of a future no longer shrouded in darkness, no longer drenched in the soaking downpour of war.

"I prefer smaller gifts of kindness, fancy dates, slow dances under moonlight, all romantic and terribly gauche things." Shepard smiles, mentally championing these ideals, preferring them to a future of running over lifelessness to preserve life. She doesn't want the thrum of adrenaline in her veins anymore, the gore that seeps into armor and the voices that seep in her brain, festering and tormenting like a disease of the mind.

She thinks of this new future, shrouded in every color and kept kindled for Sam. It may just give her something to believe in, now that her days of running wild and dispensing cosmic wrath have been ground down to dust.


End file.
